I don’t know if you’re familiar with Toffifee. It’s a sort of over-packaged nutty caramel confection that a distant relative might buy a grandparent for Christmas, or that might be the only product you recognise if you visit a German supermarket.

In a move common to all European confectionary when it’s advertised in the UK, Toffifee released a new TV advert a couple of months ago that has somehow made it on to the airwaves without anyone involved realising that it looks at least 30 years out of date. Presumably nobody involved in the entire campaign had any sense of irony.

This post isn’t really about anything other than my need to share with you just how naff the whole thing is.

In the advert, a bowl of generic sweets is shown, representing a nightmare world where different sweets have different ingredients and flavours. We are then introduced, one at a time, to four members of an alleged family, each of whom likes a specific thing. They are shown superimposed on the thing they apparently like to eat.

First is Boy, who likes caramel. Being superimposed over caramel causes him great pleasure, though he isn’t actually looking at the caramel.

Next is Dad. Dad absolutely loves a hazelnut, to the extent that footage of giant hazelnuts tumbling over each other in slow motion makes him rub his hands together in a way that literally nobody does in real life. (I hope this guy got paid well for throwing himself in to this badly conceived role.)

Now it’s the turn of Girl, whose purpose is to look enigmatic over some slow-moving brown sludge. Apparently the sludge is nougat cream, which is a very specific and esoteric thing for anyone to choose as their favourite thing, let alone a ten year old girl.

Finally, here’s Mum. Mum is visibly astonished by the existence of some fairly ordinary looking chocolate. It’s not clear why she bothers with Toffifee when she could just eat some chocolate instead.

Following that montage, the family are seen at home, where Mum opens a box of Toffifee on the sofa and everyone instantly gathers round, eats one and shows visible signs of having fun. They have been saved from the tyranny of having to eat four different things that are their favourites by this wonderful sweet that combines small amounts of all four things in a sort of sugary family compromise.

If you can believe such a thing, Storck Brands paid £1.8m to produce and air this advert. Thankfully its run on TV ended earlier this month.